


sycamore songs

by Issay



Category: Legacies (TV 2018), The Originals (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22004821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Issay/pseuds/Issay
Summary: Fate is a fickle thing.It can be the most powerful thing in the universe, more powerful than angels and demons, than dark magic and bright lights. You cannot outrun your destiny, teach the myths and legends spoken by the crackling fires, for it is the thing that makes the world spin. Whatever will be, will be. You can only embrace it.Perhaps.If there is anything Caroline has learned through the long decades of her life it's that sometimes destiny isn't what is seems to be.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes & Hope Mikaelson, Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 56
Collections: Klaroline Gift Exchange — New Year's Day





	sycamore songs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [klavscaroline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klavscaroline/gifts).



> I hope this attempt at changing the outcome of The Originals finale gives you a little moment of peace and hope for 2020. Happy New Year!

One of the things you never consider after becoming a vampire: this is a life sentence. Literally. You will watch all of your mortal friends die. And even some of the immortal ones as well because they will pass into the shadows eventually, some sooner than others. Living forever seems glamorous until you realise it's a really lonely way to be. 

Caroline faces this reality - or rather it hits her right in the face - during Alaric's funeral, their daughters already adult and settled, weeping quietly as the coffin is being lowered into the ground. They don't need her; her girls have spouses and children of their own and Caroline is standing in the back, forever looking like she's twenty years old and just beginning her life. Hope Mikaelson reaches out and squeezes her hand. To the outside world they look about the same age.

This time - unlike so many other times, she has done this in the past fifty years so many times Caroline’s head spins - it’s not grief that thrums in her veins, it’s not the deep despair of a loss that will last eternity. No, this time Caroline is angry, fury making her blood run hotter.

  
Fate is a fickle thing.

It can be the most powerful thing in the universe, more powerful than angels and demons, than dark magic and bright lights. You cannot outrun your destiny, teach the myths and legends spoken by the crackling fires, for it is the thing that makes the world spin. Whatever will be, will be. You can only embrace it.

Perhaps.

If there is anything Caroline has learned through the long decades of her life it's that sometimes destiny isn't what is seems to be. That fate makes mistakes, and it seems to her that perhaps it’s high time to undo one of the great injustices of it. Which is why once the service is over, she pulls Hope away from the crowd of the mourners.   
“I need to talk to you,” she says quietly, feeling Bonnie’s knowing eyes on the back of her neck from where the witch is standing with Elena, Damon and their kids. “I’d like to ask you for help with something. With bringing your father back.”

Because you see, fate is a thief and it has stolen so many things from Caroline Forbes. For decades, she just accepted it as a part of how the world goes - she cried over her lost loves, and lost chances at happiness, over her parents and her friends and even the town she lived in once she had to leave. Then, after years of research and being away from the people she called family, Caroline stole her daughters away from destiny (Kai’s screams still ring in her ears sometimes when she wakes from yet another nightmare, so many of them accumulated over the years) in one, breath-taking show of disagreement with fate. That win made her think that perhaps they don’t have to just take it. Perhaps they can fight back. 

“Whatever it is, I’m in,” Hope says, her eyes bright and honest. She’s a child of destiny herself, tested and wounded so deeply, a weaker mind would have broken a long time ago - but somehow she managed to thrive. A tribrid, a freak even in supernatural community, the nexus of all things that go bump in the night. Hope is the perfect mix of her parents, and Caroline loves her like one of her own children. She knows Alaric did, too.

Together, they slip away from the Mystic Falls cemetery, careful not to look at the all too familiar names on the gravestones. 

When Caroline started on her journey to save Lizzie and Josie, she travelled the world to find any piece of knowledge on the Gemini coven and the merge. But as it usually happens, she also found many resources on other things, made useful friends, and built a library in what once used to be the Mikaelson compound in New Orleans, using the renovated spaces with Freya’s approval. It’s there she and Hope travel to this time, unhurried because there is no timeline for this except the one made by their longing hearts.

“There are many ways to bring someone back from the dead,” Caroline murmurs, leafing through one of the ancient tomes on necromancy. “The one obstacle we’re facing is that Klaus is truly dead. The Other Side was destroyed which means he had to pass on, where, I do not know.”

“So we look at the magic from before The Other Side’s creation, right? Before Qetsiyah? There was a myth… Alaric told us all these years ago.”

“Alaric loved his myths.”

Hope laughs, and Caroline hears the echo of Klaus’ warm baritone in that sound. She shakes her head minutely.

“He certainly did,” the younger of the two women reaches for another stack of books. “Have you ever heard of Orpheus and Eurydice?”

Caroline would love to say that walking into the land of the dead to retrieve a soul of the loved one is the most crazy thing she has ever heard of but unfortunately that would not be true. It probably wouldn’t even qualify in the top five crazy ideas she was ever a part of.

The thing about fate is that you can be sure someone before you tried to cheat it. And that someone after you will try that as well so you better give them a good example. Their eyes are already on you.

They include Freya, as well as Kol and Davina in their plans because apparently finding a way into the underworld is not an easy task. There are moments when Caroline doubts they’ll ever get it done, they won’t find it, or maybe it doesn’t even exist. Bonnie, when consulted, is of no help and warns her friend not to mess with the things she can’t understand. But Hope is a constant presence at Caroline’s side, and when the vampire can’t search any more, she dreams.

She dreams of the river in Mystic Falls, and of soft green grass, and the whisper of water filling her senses. In her dreams, there is a friend sharing those quiet moments with her, someone thoroughly good who looks out for her, who wouldn’t want to see her get hurt.

“Keep going,” he advises and Caroline somehow knows the man is sincere; there is no trap in his voice. “Don’t give up on him, he deserves your faith.”

She wakes up, Elijah’s voice still ringing in her ears. She keeps going.

All in all, it takes them almost three years before Hope and Caroline stand before what they believe is the entrance to the underworld. It’s just a sizeable hole in the ground, nothing much to look at but the energy around it is dark and stinks of death. They exchange looks. Caroline expects another round of argument, Hope wanting to go down herself, so used to fighting against the odds at every corner. But nothing of sorts comes.

“I guess this is it,” Hope sighs and digs for something through her bag, hand returning with a coil of thin yarn shining gold in the failing light of the evening. She ties its beginning around Caroline’s wrist. “To mark your way back.”

“Thank you, Hope.”

“Bring him home, okay?”

Caroline takes one last long breath and throws herself into the whispering darkness. It’s all-encompassing and fully disorienting, and she doesn’t know for how long she falls or even when she starts to walk. There is only darkness around her - no walls, no ceiling, no sense of direction or time. Stubbornly, Caroline walks one step after another, the loop on her wrist the only reminder that somewhere above her (somewhere in a different world, one with light and wind and life) Hope is waiting for her. Is counting on her. Caroline walks on, and once the whispers become more audible - millions of voices screaming, moaning their complaints, crying out to her - she thinks of the past.

Caroline thinks of the endlessly shifting blue and green of Klaus’ eyes, depending on his mood just as much as on light. She recalls the man who wouldn’t kill a girl on her birthday, and who promised her the world. In her memories, his fingers are stained with paint, and his voice contains the potential for warmth just as well as ice. She has seen him drenched with blood of his enemies, and of innocents. Caroline embraces the good and the bad, the man who made her laugh and the monster who terrorized her friends for long months of her youth.   
(She never notices that the things that move in the darkness step away from her, charmed by her thoughts; and that the stones of the walls that block her passage move to let her through, weeping at her loss.)

There is no concept of time in that darkness so she wanders, lost in her memories until she finds herself on a raised, empty dais in a gentle, grey light that seemingly comes from up above.. There is nowhere else to go, she realizes. 

_ You’re a stubborn little immortal _ , says a disembodied voice with no small amount of amusement.  _ Stupid, perhaps. But certainly stubborn.  _

“I’m only here to beg you to return what was taken away from me,” Caroline says softly, refusing to cower in fear. She has lost the ability to be afraid somewhere in the darkness behind her.

_ And what is that, little immortal? What did you lose that made you go all this way, to the edge of the world? _ Another voice asks, a kinder than the previous one, genuinely curious. Caroline thinks on her answer for a short moment - or perhaps she takes a lot of time, she doesn’t know. 

“A chance.” Her voice is strong and sure. “A future that is not empty.”

The voices are silent at that, and the air carries whispers that she cannot understand. The silence stretches into eternity, and when Caroline is just a step away from giving up hope, he steps out of the shadows at the edge of dais. Breath hitches in her throat, it’s been so long, and she almost forgot the lines of his face even though her memory is picture-perfect. They stare at each other, wordless, and it costs Caroline so much to not reach out and touch. She knows better. Not yet.

Not yet.

_ You know the rules, little immortal. _ Says the first voice and this time she catches a note of annoyance.  _ No looking back, no talking, he walks behind you.  _

_ Good luck _ , adds the other.  _ You’re going to need it. _

With a nod, Caroline tears her eyes away from Klaus’ face and turns back to walk away from the dais. The golden thread around her wrist - Alaric loved his myths and taught Hope well, she thinks with a smile, wondering what would he think about his favorite student merrily mashing the two ancient stories together - is tight and pulls her forward. Pulls her home.

On the way back the darkness is absolutely silent: Caroline doesn’t even hear the sound of her own steps and it threatens to make her go insane. The temptation to look behind and check if Klaus is following her footsteps is overwhelming, and even fingernails pressing deep wounds into the palms of her hands are not enough. So Caroline thinks of the future.

She walks, daydreaming of the first time they go to Paris: maybe just the two of them, or maybe Hope will want to tag along, and Klaus will play their tour guide, dragging them through the city and various museums, whispering details art historians would kill to learn into their ears. Or maybe they will go to London, walk the narrow, cozy streets and sit in pubs, people-watching. Caroline thinks about holding his hand, warm fingers between her own, and about strong arms cradling her every night. She creates intricate scenarios, and tells herself that it doesn’t matter how long it will take for him to finally do good on his promise to be her last love. They have centuries to explore, and to argue, and to drag each other out of the darkness. 

Just as long as she doesn’t fail.

Caroline walks with her eyes closed shut, and dreams on the insides of her eyelids, and her steps light and hurried. The darkness stretches out, and rubs on her cheeks like a particularly cuddly cat, and finally lets her go. She wanders straight into Hope’s arms, and opens her eyes to see the sunrise. Somewhere above them birds sing in the sycamores.

“You did it,” Hope whispers, with emotion in her voice and then tears are on her face as she lets go of Caroline and throws herself at the person following Caroline into the first light of the day. Klaus holds his daughter tightly, blue-green of his eyes twinkling when he reaches out for Caroline to join the embrace.

She goes willingly, laughter bubbling in her throat, the triumphal birdsong in her ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I've been listening to "Hadestown" way too much. Guilty as charged.


End file.
